Report on Business: Fly the deadly skies

The COVID-19 pandemic has been bad for business. Keeping people healthy and safe has resulted in falling profits. So to boost business people must accept getting ill and dying. Capitalism is a death cult.

If people congregate in enclosed spaces the rate of sickness and death skyrockets. But capitalism is fundamentally built around bringing large numbers of people together to produce commodities and, often, to consume them.

So it has to make you sick and kill you. Nothing personal.

Witness the airline industry, gutted by the pandemic. In the US, government bailed out the industry to the tune of $50 Billion. Half of that was designated for workers, so that airlines wouldn’t lay them off. Sort of. Delta “furloughed” 17,000 employees, offering them a take-it-or-leave-it financial deal to “voluntarily” walk away.

So you can imagine the joy in the boardrooms of American Airlines, Air Canada, Lufthansa and the rest when governments around the world started easing travel restrictions. 

But what about precautions? Masks and PPE were mandated, but airlines insisted that social distancing–leaving empty seats–was impossible if they were to make a profit. And what is more important than their profit?

Given all that, there has not been a stampede back to air travel. How to entice potential passengers back into the skies?

Which brings us to Emirates Airline. They are offering passengers a new form of travel insurance. If you contract COVID while travelling with them they will cover all medical costs up to $175,000 and hotel room and board for up to two week’s quarantine.

And best of all, if you die, not to worry. You will get a first class funeral free of charge.

Now who can resist an offer like that. Up, up and away.